Chapter Six: The Two-Truths Debate—Reviewing the Interpretations in Theorem Form¶

Chapter Six of Essay Eighteen said that the dispute among interpretations of the two truths would be the next essay's subject. This chapter fulfills that promise. First, line up the candidates. Reading one distinguishes domains: the two truths are two object domains, the conventional and the ultimate, each with its own things. Reading two distinguishes cognitions: the two truths correspond to two kinds of knowing, with what ordinary cognition apprehends being conventional and what sagely cognition apprehends being ultimate. Reading three distinguishes teachings: the two truths are two modes of verbal teaching, unrelated to objects or principles. Reading four distinguishes levels of assertion: conventional truth is the legitimacy of E1 and E2 assertions; ultimate truth is the theorem itself. This is Essay Eighteen's formal account. Three criteria come first: no new ontology is added; the preservation theorem is secured; and the level clauses can be expressed within the reading.

Now measure the distance of each. Sarvāstivāda is the home of the reading that distinguishes domains. ‘According to conventional reasoning, saying that pots and so on exist is true, not false’: the sentence already contains the two Chinese characters ‘according to reasoning’ (依理). Truth's being truth is already tied to a way of reasoning, half a step onto the side of speech. Yet the inventory of real existents still sets up an ultimate domain, a domain of dharma-substances that withstand analysis. It fails the first criterion. Every inhabitant of this ultimate domain is a D3 candidate, and Essay Eighteen's machine has already judged each of them.¹

Bhāviveka's reading works by qualification. Each ultimate proposition carries the qualifier ‘true reality,’ fixing its target sentence by sentence. This effectively makes the ultimate a scope marker, moving in the same direction as level clause (a). Among these interpreters, it is the closest step toward theorem form. The danger is reification: if true reality is promoted from a marker to a domain, as though there were a place called the ultimate, the reading falls back into a distinction of domains. Bhāviveka's own usage remains on the marker side. The Treatise on the Jewel in the Palm is explicit: conditioned things are established as empty with respect to ultimate truth, not with respect to the conventional. In the sentence, ‘with respect to’ (就) introduces the ultimate as a mode of assessment, not a place.

Candrakīrti's reading adheres to ordinary conventions: the conventional takes worldly common acceptance as its entire standard of acceptance, while the ultimate establishes no separate domain and is spoken of only as that in which noble ones see nothing. One precaution must be recorded. If sagely cognition is elevated into a really existent capacity and the ultimate made its exclusive object domain, the reading that distinguishes cognitions becomes reified into a variant of the reading that distinguishes domains. Candrakīrti's account of seeing nothing as seeing is precisely meant to close this opening.

Jizang's reading distinguishes teachings: only modes of teaching, unrelated to objects or principles. It passes all three criteria. No ontology is added, since modes of teaching are not things. The preservation theorem has a place, with conventional truth operating as usual. The level clauses can be expressed: the four tiers are an iteration of clause (c). Its only remaining difference from reading four is the dimension used. Modes of teaching rise and fall according to the audience; scope is delimited according to quantifiers. One uses coordinates of instruction, the other coordinates of logic.

The ruling has three parts. First, the reading that distinguishes domains is excluded. Whenever the two truths become two domains, every inhabitant of the second comes within the scope of application. Second, the reading that distinguishes cognitions can survive only with a clause barring inversion. If cognition is not posited as an E3 item, the reading reduces to an epistemological account of adherence to ordinary conventions and does no independent harm. Third, the readings that distinguish teachings and levels of assertion are isomorphic. Both place the distinction between the two truths on the side of speech; both take the top level to be silence, with nothing to rely on or apprehend. Their coordinate systems differ. What can be translated between them covers the whole logical content. The remainder that cannot be translated is the dimension of adapting instruction to the audience: which tier to teach, at what time, to those of which capacities. That is a matter for the study of instruction; logic has no vote here. The final conclusion is therefore this: under theorem form, the four readings of the two truths converge into one reading, plus a parameter of instruction. A remaining point of dispute is recorded. Does the dimension of adapting to an audience really carry no logical content? An objector may reopen the question through the four tiers' index of opponents. This book registers the point without giving a final ruling.

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